Bitterness
by Xx starlight-moon xX
Summary: Oneshot. Narcissa Malfoy struggles to adjust.


**A / N : Another of my strange little oneshots, sorry . . . . This one I have an excuse for though – it was originally intended as an entry in a drabble challenge, but went over the word limit. So I scrapped that idea, but decided to post it anyway and not just waste it. :)**

**It's probably clear, but this is set during _Deathly Hallows_. Enjoy it, let me know if it doesn't make sense (I haven't changed it from the drabble format so it might be a bit confusing) . . . and if-you-like-it-please-review. **

* * *

He waits until she is brushing her hair, and then he tells her.

She is in her nightgown, tense and tired, braced for another sleepless night, when he slips it into the conversation.

Casually.

He seems to think that if he tells her calmly, her reaction will mirror his own – that she will shrug, with dull-eyed faux nonchalance, and pretend this is all quite normal and necessary.

_Oh, Lucius_.

Narcissa indulges this fantasy for a little while. She lets him tell her about the prisoners, and stares blankly into the mirror, counting her brushstrokes.

The word "circumstantial" floats past her.

Her stomach clenches at the word "favour".

She feels a sudden urge to slap him at "temporary measures", and nods stiffly as her lip tightens.

Her husband is talking quickly now, spinning words from thin air - a trick that has not worked on her in, oh, such a long time. She waits patiently, and her pulse grows just a little louder, thrumming in her eardrums.

And then she puts the brush to one side, and stands up.

"I want to see them."

Lucius pales. "Ah . . . that might be a little . . . I'm not sure that's quite . . . feasible."

"Feasible?" Narcissa laughs. "You're their jailer, darling." Lucius reaches for her arm, and she draws away. "I have the right to see them." (There are times when she wonders where it came from – the sharpness, the _bitterness _in her voice.) "I have the right to know what you're keeping under my floorboards," she continues. "Wouldn't you say?"

Her husband's jaw twitches. "No," he says coldly. "I would not."

She doesn't know why she does it. (She is in her _nightgown_, for heaven's sake.) But for once she doesn't care if it is inappropriate, or if she seems quite mad. She is gone before he can stop her, some strange pulse surging in her ears as she stumbles down the stairs.

And then the door is before her, and there can be no more hesitation.

**oooooo0000000ooooo**

She stands in the cellar, in the dungeon beneath the drawing-room floor, and feels nothing but numb distaste.

There she is.

The Lovegood girl. A _child_.

She is fairhaired, and frightened, curled against the opposite wall. Thin . . . dirty . . . with pale, wide eyes. And she _stares. _She stares at Narcissa as though she is some strange daydream, an illusion that will shatter if she looks too closely.

Narcissa is dimly aware of Lucius - a shadow in the doorway. When she begins to shake, when she can look at the girl no longer, she closes her eyes and stumbles backwards. The door slams behind her, blotting out the prisoners, the macabre truth of it all.

She gasps, a strange, hiccupping sob.

Lucius steps towards her, winding an arm around her waist. His lips touch her collarbone, and the lock clicks as he shifts her gently to one side.

She kisses him, bare feet braced against the doorframe - as though it will change anything, as though it is something more than a futile gesture . . . as though it will pull the poison from her lips, draw the bitterness from her tongue.

He kisses her, murmurs in her ear.

Reassurance?

Perhaps not.

Perhaps it unnerves him, to go from prisoner to prison guard so abruptly. Or perhaps he considers it fitting – perhaps he _relishes_ it.

Narcissa cannot hear him, either way.

Perhaps she no longer cares.

He strokes the nape of her neck – his lips hot against her skin, an inch from her heart - as his fingers curl sharply around her thigh, and she reconsiders. His explanations come in halting stops and fluid starts, incoherent, and -

" _. .. for you . . ." _he murmurs –

- and she understands that he is hopeless, that he has lost . . .

He presses into her, and she gasps.

_Oh, Lucius. _


End file.
